The danger in a really great series is automatically believing every episode is as good or better than the last one. Conversely, allowing for coming up short of brilliant is more than just kindness to a show with a proven track record — it has more to do with the unsustainable nature of genius. Just because one episode fails to meet the heights of others doesn’t make it poor, just less great if you will.

And that’s where “The Beautiful Girls” falls. All told there were a number of superb moments – the death of Miss Blankenship, Sally cooking for Don and Peggy’s continued evolution as one of the most substantially created female characters on television. But the episode seemed too keen — from the title onward — on reminding us of the disparate role of women in 1965. It’s almost as if there was a discussion in the writer’s room about whether they had pushed the women’s rights/feminism angle strong enough. And so what we got was a top to bottom look at the women in the office and extended world, from Miss Blankenship to Peggy to Joan to Faye to Betty to Sally, with a minor stop for the lesbian Joyce and the secretary Megan. “Mad Men” doesn’t need to hit us over the head that hard, as the audience is, by now, used to looking for the issues and parsing the subtleties. The entire body of work devoted from Season 1 to the present regarding Peggy stands as evidence that telling the long story is preferable to putting three disparate women in an elevator before you roll credits.

Other problems helped gum up the greatness a bit. The mugging of Roger and Joan and their follow-up sex wasn’t remotely believable. And the strides taken in addressing the differences that Peggy and Joan have as women who chose decidedly different paths was undermined, in Joan’s case, by her dalliance with Roger. (Particularly as it came just one episode after the starkly different reactions each woman had to the crude drawing and how they dealt with each other afterward – a scene far superior than most of the blunt force doled out in this one.) Strangely enough, in the service of the women’s rights/feminism angle, the episode played the racism angle of the Fillmore Auto Parts company with perhaps too much subtlety or, at least, not enough heft. And yet, despite that, there was plenty to love in the hour.

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No. Just no.

In “The Beautiful Girls,” Don got to be the foil twice. Tapping into the dark humor, he had to deal with Miss Blankenship’s death and her removal from the office. Later he came up short in how he dealt with Faye and even with Betty, who despite her inability to parent can at least spot the same trait in Don (telling him to keep Sally and find out how hard it is to have the kids all the time). Just when Don began to open up and show some sweetness in regard to Faye, he pawns off runaway Sally on her not once but twice (in what was, if you can bend your mind around it, an act that belittles his involvement with and knowledge of both of them about a dozen different ways).

The entire death scene of Miss Blankenship was handled deftly because it encapsulated humor and sadness, particularly how Roger and Bert dealt with their feelings about her. Bert’s stab at the obit — “She was born in 1898 in a barn. She died on the 37th floor of a skyscraper. She’s an astronaut” — was wonderful. Though Miss Blankenship was mostly used for the purposes of humor during her brief stint, she did manage to inform Peggy that fighting the male domination in the work force was masochistic, while also implying that Faye’s fleeting dealings with her constituted self-important arrogance, but were probably necessary to get ahead (and get respect) in that kind of work environment. Those are the kinds of observations that work best in making a point. Having Peggy joust with a fool like Abe and also get judged and lectured by Joyce took things a little too far. And the three-women-in-the-elevator moment was less metaphorically revealing than it was posed.

But the night’s biggest gaffe was clearly the Roger and Joan incidents. With Joan’s husband called up she immediately latches on to Roger? Not only does that not jibe with past episodes this season, it veered off comments she made to Roger in this very episode about his less than veiled pronouncements about them hooking up. Is Roger so suave these days as to lure Joan back into a situation she’s clearly moved on from (and grown in the process)? Doubtful. This season we’ve seen her dismiss Roger’s drunken pouting and she has access to his self-indulgent biography. Plus he married his secretary; a secretary not named Joan. It doesn’t seem plausible in the slightest that she’d get ensnared again, much less have sex out in the street after being mugged (and let’s not speak anymore of the mugging). That whole scene stands out as something better suited to inferior dramas.

What did work was Peggy (as usual), the heartbreaking need for love that Sally feels and the maturation of Don and Faye. “Mad Men” has always had a keen eye for the plight of kids and how the parenting of the times (and the reflection on the parenting of the present as it relates to overworked parents and broken homes) causes so much damage. This is also an area that “Mad Men” plunders successfully for humor, but it’s the moments of abandonment, emotional disconnection and the harness of expected behavior that brings such great dramatic results. They should have put Sally in that elevator all by herself.

Anyway, a good but not great episode of “Mad Men” with plenty left to talk about. Have at it.